


Built On Fire

by Missy



Category: Evil Dead (1981), Evil Dead (Movies), Evil Dead - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Demons, Desperation, F/M, Homophobic Language, Murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-01
Updated: 2012-07-01
Packaged: 2017-11-08 22:40:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/448346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/pseuds/Missy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ash and Scott are still alive.  But the Deadites haven't given up yet...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Built On Fire

**Author's Note:**

> Written for SmallFandomFest Round 11, Prompt: Evil Dead Trilogy, Ash/Scott, "We're all going to die here...."

_It’s the wind,_ Ash told himself as he holstered up the shotgun and took a brave step forward. _The wind and nothing but the wind._ He made note of the new status quo; his sister, snarling and cackling in the basement; his girlfriend’s headless corpse out in the garden. Scott somewhere out there in the wilderness. 

A shudder raced through Ash’s body as he slowly walked back toward the couch and sat, facing the basement. He couldn’t sleep yet; wouldn’t until dawn. Wouldn’t it be heavenly, to close his eyes without worrying his loss of consciousness would be permanent? 

He clutched the shotgun against his lap, eyes pressed tightly closed, and counted the beat of his pulse. The minutes passed. No moans came from the basement; no creek upon the steps. He refused to relax his guard. 

Then Ash’s eyes flew wide as the front door snapped open. He got off two blasts from his rifle before Scott hollered at him. 

“Christ, Ash,” he growled, wiping his sweat-coated face against his inner arm, “it’s just me!”

He squinted at Scott in disbelief. “How did you make it down the road?” The half-mad disbelief in his voice sounded small and even rather wounded.

Scott’s grin was close to psychotic and held up a lighter and the large canister of gas – the one Ash recognized as his own. “These had something to do with it.”

“You started a forest fire?!” Ash’s instinctive boyscout-like nature overook his pride in his best friend’s idea.

“Cool it,” growled Scott. “I just burned us a path down to the road. There’s a walking trail that should run down to the main road. Unless these undead fuckers know how to hitchhike, we should be safe by dawn. ”

Ash’s shoulders slumped. Two against two settled the score; it made the odds far more even than they had been when Scott had left the cabin those few hours ago. Ash reached with a shaking, blood-coated hand for the bottle of moonshine he’d been swilling by himself throughout the night. Two burning, sharp gulps and he passed the bottle to Scott.

“Thanks,” he leaned against the doorframe, eyeing the too-still trap door that kept Cheryl penned within the cellar. Occasionally it would rattle, and a hideous cackle would fill the air. The two men stared, wide-eyed, at the cellar, waiting for her to pop up her head.

But it wasn’t Cheryl who interrupted the temporary peace.

Scotty got out a holler as Linda’s arms shot through the cabin’s exterior wall, both of her hands wrapping around his throat and pulling Ash’s body with superhuman might toward the shattered parlor room window, his arms pinned down by the windowframe. 

The axe Ash had abandoned in the sitting room was his salvation; Scott swung it with might and disconnected Linda’s arm from her shoulder. While Scott hacked at tendon and sinew Ash squirmed and cried, trying desperately to avoid being scratched or bitten by her.

Scott managed to lop off her other arm and Ash – freed at last - whirled around and kicked her limbless torso out of the open window. 

He and Scott went to work chopping up the wriggling fingers and stampeding palms she’d left behind. When they were done they collapsed on the upended, blood-smeared sofa. Ash sputtered out a few words of thanks, but they were cut off once more when Linda kicked down the back doorway.

This time, her target was Scott. Throwing her legs around his waist, she cackled something about scissoring in a demonic voice before headbutting him as hard as she could.

It took Ash one moment to create a memory that would haunt him for the rest of his life. As Linda’s head went sailing across the room, his world shape-shifted. The room seemed to do the same. He cut away her legs, hacked apart her torso, sliced the breasts he had kissed only a week before into gristly hunks of flesh. 

And when the meat of her body stopped twitching and finally lay still, and Scott sat gasping for oxygen, Ash gracelessly bent over the arm of the couch and vomited.

***

“I killed my girlfriend for you.”

Scott barely looked up from the canned stew he’d been heating. “Roger,” he said lightly, then poured it evenly into the last two uncracked mugs the cabin. Ash didn’t touch it.

“I killed my girlfriend for you,” Ash whispered, the enormity of what they’d done crashing in on him. 

Scott shrugged. “Basically did the same thing for me,” he said, slugging down the rest of the moonshine. “We’re about square, man.” Ash stared, his eyes enormous, stark in his blanched face. “Ash, don’t lose it. I need you to stay with me.”

“We might die tonight,” Ash said, his voice wavering. “I don’t wanna go out there alone. I can’t…without you knowing how much you mean to me.”

Scott’s blue eyes glowed; the manic cast of them were a warning to Ash, but Scott plunged on. “Stop talking like a fag, man.”

Ash tapped the table with his fingertips, eyes . “I’d rather be a fag than alone,” he said, getting up, heading for bed. “Coming or not?”

Scott gulped. “Don’t tell anybody about this,” he demanded. 

“Who’s there to tell?” 

Ash held out the moonshine like a talisman as they walked to the back bedroom. 

*** 

He found himself licking the bruises the monsters had left on his best friend. What melted them together was as different as everything else that had occurred that night – and just as intimately destructive. Ash curled himself into Scott’s back and fashioned himself a world from the heat of his flesh, the silence, the moonshine. 

“We’ve gotta burn that book,” Scott declared, rubbing his eyes against Ash’s shoulder.

 

*** 

Cheryl got loose an hour before dawn, but she wasn’t much of a match for the two of them. He tried to forget that it was his sister he wounded, his sister who lay bleeding at his own hands. He bucked up and got on with the show. When he was done, Ash flung down the axe, wishing for an end to the war.

Scott got the book, took the dagger. 

_They might die out there._

Scott’s knuckles turned china-white as he grabbed Ash’s hand with his free one. 

The knife and book both crackled in the fireplace.

Soon they stood outside, gasoline cans piled by Ash’s Oldsmobile. 

_They might die still._

The cabin seemed to scream as it hit flashover and turned the world orange.

_Maybe._

_But not now._


End file.
